


Picture This

by onbrokenfeet



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Existential, F/F, Fluff, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 15:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16997463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onbrokenfeet/pseuds/onbrokenfeet
Summary: “It is a face in its own right, white as a knuckle and terribly upset." - The Moon and the Yew, Sylvia Plath.Laura just wants to see Carmilla smile, and okay, maybe capture it for when she's away. That's not so bad, right?





	Picture This

**Author's Note:**

> I'm drunk. I'm tired. I just wanted to have some fun with this and I did! Please enjoy!

Laura feels as though she’s filming a nature documentary. She tries not to interfere, not to meddle at first. She waits for the right moment, the right shot. Carmilla. The focus of it all, the focus of more than half her passion on any ordinary day. Laura clicks the button on the polaroid camera and grins. She had to have gotten it. That momentary flicker. That tug at lips so inviting, so sweet, so tame. Laura shakes the picture as Carmilla blinks slowly, trying to recover from the light.    
  
“Can I help you, sweetheart?”    
  
“When you look at the stars, you kind of start to smile,” Laura says. Carmilla laughs and Laura tries to capture it, with her mind, with her entire being. That smile stretches across a face so smooth. It’s always like she doesn’t have a care in the world.   
  
“You need a picture of my smile for a particular reason or are you making some kind of really creepy scrapbook I don’t want to know about?”    
  
“Can it be both?”    
  
“I’d prefer neither,” Carmilla says, almost thoughtfully. Carmilla turns her eyes back to the sky and Laura wonders why she needs to feel small. Laura wonders why, after everything, she needs to remember the endlessness of the universe. The endlessness of all things evil, good, and the grey areas in between. She wonders why someone so large, so endless herself, so very infinitely wonderful, needs to feel small to smile.    
  
“You matter,” Laura says softly. She’s not one to speak softly, not often. But she does, she does so without a thought.    
  
“You do too,” Carmilla says. She doesn’t look to Laura. But Laura looks, and Laura waits, and Laura hopes. She doesn’t get it though, a slight tug at the lips, a slight rise of the brow. That’s it. No smile. Only a thoughtful look, a content look. Right now, in this moment, on the balcony of their flat, microwave dinners in front of crossed knees, that’s enough. Carmilla grabs Laura’s hand, locking their fingers in a light grip.    
  
Laura looks to the same sky, the moon that cascades over the city. Its reflected light bounding across buildings like a superhero. Its face smiling, an eerie smile, a consistent smile. A smile not nearly as beautiful as the one she’s trying so hard to provoke. Tickling resulted in the threat of claws, dinner resulted in a fire hazard she certainly won’t be telling her dad about, and kisses resulted in some things better left off film.    
  
So now Laura just reclines, her back against the sliding glass door, her body cozy in Carmilla’s hoodie, her hand cold in her wife’s hand. She relaxes and lets out a breath. A sigh. A frustration born from the inability to coax something so small, such a tiny piece of happiness, out of someone so infinite.    
  
“It is a face in its own right, white as a knuckle and terribly upset,” Carmilla says, her voice lost somewhere far away. Her mind there with it, wandering the wilds.    
  
“Plath?” Laura asks after a moment, her mouth full of rice that was almost sneakily pulled from Carmilla’s plate.    
  
“That’s the one,” Carmilla says with a nod.   
  
“You don’t think it’s a smile?”   
  
“Sweetheart, if you think that’s a smile I think you’ve captured quite a few in your quest for photos,” Carmilla says. Laura blushes, swallowing hard.    
  
“I just miss you when I’m travelling for the network and sometimes, even when you’re here I miss your smile. You kind of primarily smirk, so yeah, I wanna just see you, y’know, be happy. Is that so bad?”    
  
“I suppose not,” Carmilla says. “Though I don’t need to smile to be happy.”    
  
“I guess so,” Laura says.    
  
“I have you, I have microwave rice meals, and the void above us sparkling like a dishevelled Christmas tree, what else do I need to be happy?”    
  
Laura thinks. Laura thinks of all the things she can. Of all things good, of all things bad, of all things grey in between. She thinks of how large everything around her is, of how nothing ever stops moving, and how the world will exist long after she does. She thinks of these things, because she knows Carmilla does. She thinks of Carmilla, though, and she feels infinite too. For all things matter, for Carmilla matters, for she matters. And that makes her smile. She looks at the polaroid she took. She looks at Carmilla’s brooding face. She looks at the slight frown, at the creases in her cheeks, and the furrow in her brow. She wonders how she missed it, that tiny moment, that tug, that almost smile.   
  
She decides right then, she doesn’t care. She casts the picture aside and smiles anyway, glad to be happy, glad to make Carmilla happy. She smiles and she sighs. She looks to Carmilla, and she gets what she’s wanted all along. Carmilla, a bright, clever little smile across her lips. Carmilla, leaning in, a kiss so soft yet so inviting. A kiss that sears and burns. A kiss like a star collapsing against Laura’s skin. A kiss that leaves her dazed, even after all this time. Carmilla leans back, a hand against Laura’s cheek, a thumb stroking pink skin.    
  
“I love you,” Carmilla says.    
  
“I love you too,” Laura says.    
  
“Even if I don’t smile?”    
  
“As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”    
  
“Then happy you will always be.”    
  
-end-


End file.
